Elms College Field Hockey Takes Holland!: The City of Delft and a Dutch BBQ

Hello Everyone!

We spent most of the day in the beautiful city of Delft. Upon arriving, we were given a tour of the city by Coach Cosenza's fiancees mother, Moeder Lies (who lives in Holland). We started the tour in a large square in the center of Delft learning about the major landmarks and history of the city. The first thing we noticed when we walked into the center square was the largest pile of beer cases we have ever seen. Moeder Lies explained that Delft (being a college town) had just had a very big and popular festival. This particular festival was all about drinking 15,000 beers and afterwards building an enormous bridge using the empty beer cases. We weren’t able to see the finished “beer case bridge” but it was an interesting and unique concept! Next, we learned about the City Hall. We learned that the top of the building was originally used as a jail and that many people get married here! In fact, we were able to witness a wedding right before we left the square! Another building located in Delft was a very large and old church. The church took seven years to build because the town kept running out of money to fund the building. Because of the soft foundation the church was built on (because it is located near the canals), the church started to lean two-thirds of the way through the building process. Once they realized this, they tried to compensate at the top so as you can see in the pictures, the church leans one way and straightens out at the top.

After we finished our fantastic tour with Moeder Lies we took and an hour long boat ride tour through the canals! The tour was led by a local college student and she was full of interesting and fun facts about the city of Delft. One interesting tradition was that when the students of Delft graduate from the University, they throw their bike into the canal to celebrate that they can now get a job and afford to buy a car. Every year when they clean out the canals they find thousands of bikes. Later on, we were given free time to explore and shop around the city on our own. We walked through a vast antique market and got our Delft blue souvenirs for which the town is very famous for (get excited friends and family!!). We enjoyed an enormous amount of gelato, refreshing mint tea with honey, and even some fries with mayonnaise (surprisingly very delicious--don't knock it until you've tried it!).

After Delft, we drove to Paul’s family’s house where we enjoyed a Dutch style barbeque with his family and some of Coach Cosenza’s family. Some of the food we enjoyed was raw Herring and onion (see pictures- hilarious), Bitterballen (deep fried meat, broth, butter, herbs and spices), homemade meatballs, cucumber and tomato with feta, cous cous (with peaches) and other assorted traditional dutch foods. For dessert, we enjoyed apple pie, ice cream and a personal favorite of ours – STROOPWAFFELS (again, get excited family members)!

Day 4 is complete and we are exhausted and our stomachs are more than full – resting up to explore more things tomorrow! Do you sense a trend of consistent early bedtimes??

Love, Ally & Kayla